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Hurrah! It’s the first proper trailer for the upcoming anime prequel Mass Effect: Paragon Lost in all its glory. And by glory, I mean of course… oh good lord, you have to be kidding. It may have Production IG involved, but we’re not exactly talking Ghost In The Shell here. The fun series, I mean. Not the boring, over-rated movie and its even more tedious sequel.

How do I dislike this awful trailer, let me count the ways. Firstly, I suspect the total will be slightly higher than the number of frames in this incredibly choppy action. Second, oh dear, that voiceover. Put down your damn cigar and copy of The Bumper Book Of Action Cliches and try again. I wonder how many times the actor accidentally said “the final frontier” instead of “the endless abyss”. Maybe he was distracted by the giant brain monster staring back at him from that nebula. It is quite distracting, with its giant eyes and gaseous smile…

As for it being James Vega, I’m not sure that we need the epic backstory of the guy who sat in my ship’s hold for the entire of Mass Effect 3, but never never mind. If he’s who Bioware wants to shill instead of someone, well, actually interesting, fine, whatever. I’m sure we’d have been bored by dark smuggling action on Omega or the Blasto movie anyway. It absolutely makes no sense to do lots of shorts exploring different corners of the Mass Effect universe, like Halo: Legends, only making them all really cool, unlike Halo: Legends. None at all. Sniff.

There is however no forgiving the line “Let’s get something straight. You ladies might be well-trained Special Forces, but you haven’t done squat.” Not only does that make me want to hear him cut off by the sound of Miranda, Liara, Ashley, Samara, Jack, Tali and Commander Fucking Shepard all walking in to take turns kicking this guy’s balls from Thessia to Tuchanka, I think we all know that this is how badass military talk goes in the Mass Effect universe.

Of course, this might just be an awful trailer, and the result might be another awesome animated game to video conversion like… uh… um… oh yeah. Sigh. Never mind. At least we’ll always have the official Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs movie to look back on.

This looks like shit and I think the narration has made me actively stupider. Looks like Production IG had an intern bang it out in the shed. Doesnt even look as good as stuff several years older e.g. GITS:SAC

I liked James Vega. He stayed in the cargo bay as well, because I didn’t need another Soldier in my squad, but something about his character endeared him to me. He was refreshingly one-dimensional, just a rad dude and space marine who does 200,000,000,00 pull ups a day.

I just gasped so hard I inhaled a spider, you owe me for this Cobbett. Overrated it may be, but boring? Slightly. Maybe my memories of both films, Innocence and two series are just merging together. This does, however, look like shit.

The GITS movie is a dull clip-show conversion of a much better book which mistakes having long-winded conversations for actually saying anything interesting. Innocence is NyQuil in movie form. Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is just embarrassing.

It’s ceratinly not top-noth. Shirow himself admits in the afterword that GITS was pretty cursory as far as cyberpunk goes, and a little derivative. It was done fast – and it shows in the artwork and in flow of the panels. Still, it had likeable characters, it was not taking itself too seriously, and was for the most part, fun to read.

Shirow is good with ideas but he is terrible storyteller. I like the comics, even “Man-Machine Interface”, but they are the weakest product in this franchise. GITS SAC is better than the comics and both Oshii movies are better than SAC.

It’s definitely something to pick up sometime at a library. The movie only flirted with the theme of transhumanism (as cryptically, pretentiously, and poorly as humanly possible), but the book dives into it and the sociopolitical climate fairly well.

Haven’t seen the SAC series or the sequel. Sequel’s by the same director so it’s probably the same plodding self-indulgent bullshit.

SAC and Second Gig (and Solid State Society, the OAV) were utterly brilliant. The movie sequel didn’t thrill me in terms of story but it’s visually gorgeous and the soundtrack is fantastic. Worth a rental at least.

This is probably wasted breath in a thread about transhumanism literature, but everyone should definitely read Transmetropolitan. It’s mashed full of crazy ideas like a Charlie Stross book. I somehow went years without ever hearing of it until I picked it up at random on my own – I won’t let the same happen to anyone else!

I think the GITS franchise in general does a very good job of the cyberpunk genre. The manga was good (fuchikoma! Also plot!), but you also had to plough through the author-appeal sections (“she’s a tough talking supermodel-lesbian-hacker-commando who talks guns, throws orgies and poses in skimpy outfits!”. See also Appleseed, though handled less transparently there iirc).

I liked the first GITS movie a lot. I’ll need to rewatch the second sometime. SAC was good, as was the OVA.

+1 to the “Read the Invisibles” crowd. Transmet is worth a read, but imo overrated.

I am writing to relate my supreme disappointment in regards to your previous comments. Ghost in the Shell is, and remains, the best anime film ever made. Yes, it’s better than Akira. I found it to be tense, deep, well-acted and stunningly well-designed on the visual side.

It completely jettisoned many stale anime cliches in favor of telling a bold story, which brought up interesting questions and had several twists. Yes, it’s a bit pretentious. Yes, it’s a bit slow in parts. But the slowness builds tension, and the philosophical depth of some of the dialogue continues to be unmatched.

In addition, the plot rejects the tendency of anime, and action movies in general, to rely on huge setpieces, instead boiling down to small but messy confrontations.

I’m not a fanboy or anything. I don’t even really like anime, and I haven’t seen SAC. But I cannot in good conscience abide an attack on this fine film.

“As I stand here on this floating island of solitude, I stare through my cybernetic eyes at these citadels and hives of cybernetic corruption, and I wonder… am I human, or something else? Are the juices in my veins merely upgraded blood, or a network of canals from which I can never hope to climb out and regain what was lost. Is this progress, or merely being pushed forwards by cruel, uncaring fate? When I think, is it me who thinks, or a computerised program devised by cold science; the seneschals of transcendence guarding this uncertain future? Oh, woe. Cold. I am so cold. Sometimes, I wonder if I can even feel any more; feel anything except AAARGH MOTHERFUCKER YOU SHOT ME IN THE FUCKING LEG!”

“That’s one philosophical question down then. You’re buying the beer.”

It’s nothing but aimless meandering, sad attempts at waxing philosophical, and some nice eye candy. It’s like they took only one of several ideas the book explores (tanshumanism’s effect on individuals) and just had people pretend to talk about it for an hour, later fitting the sound clips into the movie. It’s pure pretentiousness disguised as an arthouse filck, a movie purposely written to go nowhere.

And as for stale anime cliches? How many times did Major take her clothes off and treat viewers to gratuitous tit-shots with the hilarious excuse that she needs to in order to use an advanced optical camouflage?

It’s the anime world’s Avatar: nice to look at, but under the shiny surface absolutely nothing there. Do yourself a favor and read the comic.

The book does not explore anything interesting. It’s fluff. It was made to be fun, not deep, and it mostly succeds at that. The Ghost in the Shell book with ideas is Man-Machine Interface, but this one is only for hardcore Shirow fans.

Whilst I mostly agree with your criticisms (bland, pretentious and ultimately superficial movies, but something I find enjoyable all the same), I’m going to argue about the tit shots.

You’d have to have some crazy kinks if you, or anyone else, found the tit shots in GITS to be sexy. A Woman with muscles bulging out of the skin like coconuts in a stocking, tearing herself asunder through over-exertion is one of the least sexy things I’ve ever seen, and that’s kind of the point. The point is that in this future, emotions and desires are muted and nudity looks inhumane and mechanical (see also: opening).

The series, on the other hand, is crammed full of cheap tit and ass shots.

Glad to hear it! We watched the film, got the impression that this was like that portal live action thing, “at last that thing you like, but with people!” if you swap “people” for “big budget animation”. Lots of assuming that I knew who people were, and lots of lovely shots of something that presumably means something to the comics people.

It was ok, because I just went into non-linear story mode and imagined this was some kind of flashforward that the animes or whatever would fill out, but some of the other people I was watching it with were distinctly unimpressed.

Yup, I actuallly did. A couple of times at that. And I don’t find the politics interesting at all. And I didn’t find any ideas in it that weren’t explored in S-F before. I like it, I like the movie better. And they have very little in common, to be honest. Oshii just took a core story and made it his own. the movie is just as deep as the manga, i.e. not very, but I like it’s mood. Oshii was always good with that.

If by making it his own you mean making it pretentious, dull, plodding, meaningless, and pretending to be smarter than it really is, yes he certainly did. That “mood” is really just the slow creeping realization that the movie is going nowhere because it never knew where it was to begin with.

So you’re just white-knighting a movie you actually have never seen before just because an RPS editor and some other posters don’t like it?

So then you’re just trying to buck the trend for no other reason than you can?

That leaves you in a much, much more sad, strangle place you poor little one. The first thing to do when you’ve dug yourself into a hole is to stop digging. Or you can continue, it’s quite amusing. Let me know if you strike oil.

“So you’re just white-knighting a movie you actually have never seen before just because an RPS editor and some other posters don’t like it?”

You’re truly an idiot. Did I ever say I’ve never seen it? I have seen it, in fact it was a favorite of mine for several years until I grew up and started deciphering the flaws in it. GiTS is certainly not perfect, but it’s a far cry from the disaster you and your favorite RPS editor are claiming it is. What you two have is opinion, not fact, despite your puerile insistence otherwise.

A slow movie doesn’t even begin to mean a bad movie. Tarkovsky’s films are among the slowest films ever and the ones with the less plot and they are masterpieces. A slow pace is also a distinguishing quality among most eastern cinema. Loong stretches on which nothing happens. THat’s just who they are. Watch some korean, japanese, chinese and even russian films and you’ll notice that trend. Not stupid, loud, films which main purpose is to entertain but artful pieces which purpose is to make you think or to serve as a vehicle of expression to the author.

I would SO like writers to be requiered to read at least some books on aesthetic theory before even being allowed to give their opinion on art. Some tend to equate being a writer with automatically having an interesting and well thought out opinion.

I take it you are the kind of person who hates post modern books (YAY FOR PYNCHON!) and stories because they have no point and give no answers. But just don’t mistake personal taste with objective quality. I won’t say I know any objective qualities found in the GITS film save “it exists”, I’m not such a pretentious douche. I’ll just say i like it.

And also i believe you haven’t provided any criticism on the movie based on it’s cinematographic qualities, you just limited yourself to a few senseless criticism of it’s script and declared the whole movie bad. Wow. I think you may actually be one of those old fashioned people who think of movies sorely in terms of their storytelling. Or just not too bright. It’s not my place to decide.

Sounds like you’ve already started, since I didn’t say ‘slow’, I said ‘which mistakes having long-winded conversations for actually saying anything interesting’. That is not the same thing. To use another Oshii film, Patlabor 2 is also very slow, and deviates dramatically from the much lighter source material, but it’s a great film.

I Edited the message and added further points to adress your criticism about dialogue. Again i say: Dialogue’s only function is no to transmit information. It can also transmit personality, style, tone, mood. Not all art is about delivering something to the one who watches. THere are tons and tons of books which thrive on speaking much and not saying anything. Like Pynchon, Burroughs and many others.

Hell, even before post modernism Style was an end on it’s own. With Faulkner and Joyce and others. Finnegan’s Wake is a whole book about saying a lot and not saying anything. Sometimes, the style IS the substance.

Wow, after being belittling and insulting over deconstructions of points that you yourself were the only one to make, you hold out even a smidgen of hope that I actually have any interest in what you think? Impressive!

As someone that entertains a conspiracy theory that Richard Cobbett is the reason I can’t post half the time, you’re really ridiculous, and need to calm down.

It’s not like he called you a hitler. He just said the he thinks that Ghost in the Shell isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At no point does that mean you can go ahead and act like he questioned your parentage- that’s ridiculous.

Ssssh. He’s deducing more from a couple of lines than Sherlock Holmes could get out of a signed confession and videotape of a bank heist. If we leave alone for a bit, we’ll have this week’s winning lottery numbers by eight.

I simply had to register to point out that perhaps Mr..Cobbett did not enjoy the philosophy contained within the GitS films because Mr. Cobbett does not understand philosophy, for anyone with a modicum of knowledge concerning the subject would know that what Kilometrik was doing, somewhat personal attacks included, was induction, and not, as Mr. Cobbett believes, deduction. This is such a schoolboy error that I must, through my own powers, of, ahem, induction, suggest that the dear RPS journalist has no formal education in the field of philosophy at all. For anyone who had would know that Sherlock Holmes mistakenly refers to one of his investigative talents as a power of “deduction” – and this being quite incorrect (for, crucially, nothing of what Mr. Holmes inferred from evidence, real or imagined, *must* have been true because of it; it only may have been true, or even been likely to have been true) was no mistake on the part of Conan Doyle, for he notes several times quite clearly that one thing Mr. Holmes knows nothing of is… philosophy. And Holmes amusing error is nothing but a little joke on the part of the author, a little irony considering how assured Holmes is of his judgements’ correctness… but, sadly one oft missed by the ill-informed… and one that has, invariably, led to a majority who are wrong at the absolute root of what they believe the correct usage of “deduction” to be…

Sure the first film has some dull, overwrought and unnecessary dialogs that only serve to spell out the underlying themes, but to claim it’s boring is going way to far. Opening scene action sequence is just jaw dropping, same goes for the fight with this big robot tank at the end, and these aren’t the only ones. Story isn’t that bad either. Sure it is fairly standard political thriller over the cyberpunk backdrop, but it so much more than the sum of its parts. If it wasn’t for the aforementioned chit-chat it would be up there with the Blade Runner. A rather funny coincidence if you consider the hated voice-over in the theatrical cut. Manga on the other hand is mediocre at best. The amount of fan service is just off-putting and the story is all but incomprehensible. At least we agree on the quality of the TV show.

Being a hopeless otaku (which is actually a derogatory term, think about that next time you proclaim yourself one) who’s so offended at the fact there are people who like movies who see through the GITS movie’s smokescreen of pretentious, self-indulgent bullshit is certainly not a positive trait.

When I read this sort of guff I have to wonder if there’s some alternative cut of the film out there, because the 1995 Ghost in the Shell film is as near perfect as I’ve ever seen. It’s completely beyond me how intelligent, sci-fi watching people (who aren’t irrationally biased against anime to start with) can fail to love it. It’s atmospheric, it’s beautiful and refreshing to watch and listen to, it’s intelligent at a level few films ever are and at no point does it ever patronise. It also has great action scenes that are all the better for being detailed, quick and significantly more realistic than most live-action.

Assuming that there isn’t some ‘special encrappened edition’ floating around that people are seeing instead of the bona fide masterpiece I’m familiar with, one that takes the fairly sparse and meticulously written dialogue away and fills it with witter (just as the disney dubs of Ghibli films do), I have to come to one of two conclusions. Either you have a woefully short attention span, or you’re just not interested in literary/philosophical conversations; either way, you don’t seem to be reading the film on the levels at which it’s trying to engage you.

I mean, what about the conversations in the films disappoint you, compared to the manga? What were you wanting that you didn’t get? The manga skates over stuff in dialogue to relate it in footnotes and daft explanatory diagrams, doing stuff only a manga can and a film can’t; the tone, narrative flow and art style is all over the place, but thanks to the ideas the manga works overall. The film manages to be consistent in tone, narrative approach and look, and be much more nuanced and sophisticated in its dialogue. Most of the conversation in it happens inside cyberbrains; how do you expect anyone to depict that in animation, particularly given the state of the art at the time?

From your use of ‘boring’ and the idea of setting ‘actually interesting’ as an alternative to ‘long-winded conversation’, It’s really tempting to say that you just didn’t understand it and thus mistook complexity for incoherence – that does tend to happen a lot, generally, among audience responses to complex ideas in films – but I don’t think that’s it. I love the series too, but where I think it falls down is that it’s married to an episodic, 24-minute structure that basically prevents it from asking any really, well, you’d probably say ‘long-winded’ where I’d say ‘interesting’, questions, so you’re left with a great idea that’s not really explored, only used for cool action scenes. And surely if you found the films boring, then all the back-and-forth dialogue with Gohda (which I loved) in the second series was also boring ? If not, why not?

“I have to come to one of two conclusions. Either you have a woefully short attention span, or you’re just not interested in literary/philosophical conversations; either way, you don’t seem to be reading the film on the levels at which it’s trying to engage you.”

That or I don’t think it succeeds at what it’s trying to do, regardless of how noble what it’s trying to do is. The fun thing about that interpretation is that it doesn’t require ad hominems, which is probably why the idea didn’t come to you on your own. See also your post about not knowing anything about anime instead of being polite and saying “Maybe you didn’t see this thing…” about whatever it was you thought you were trying to say.

Simplest explanation for the original Ghost in the Shell is that it’s an anime version of Blade Runner. Motoko Kusanagi is investigating a case and what she finds alters her perception of who she is as a person.

I think Ghost in the Shell is an excellent movie but I thought of it as a slower movie involving an investigation rather than a straight up action movie. Innocence (the second movie) was visually impressive but it was pretentious – I didn’t like it very much. As for the series, I loved both seasons and the Solid State Society movie, but Motoko Kusanagi is a different character in that timeline (much more motherly to her teammates – also sure of who she is as a person, unlike the movie). I don’t think the series would have been as good if they’d have taken the movie’s Motoko and put her into a series setting.

If you’re eight and can have your attention held by cuddly robots and don’t mind one page of plot stretched out to however many dozen episodes through delaying, dragging out and adding pointless filler.

The important thing to remember is that Kamiyama (SAC series) and Oshii (non-SAC films) took two different approaches in adapting Shirow’s manga.

Oshii made the film in his own style, source material notwithstanding. He changed GitS from a futuristic police drama (think CSI) into a grimdark art film, changing the focus from the politics and people to cyberspace and philosophy (the latter being entirely unexplored). Oshii’s adaptation was liberal, even inserting his own basset hound into Innocence because he liked the dog so much, and could do so because he had the authority of reputation from Patlabor and Urusei Yatsura.

Kamiyama, on the other hand, was more conservative. SAC fell back on the manga, only making a few changes, like removing some extraneous humor and revising character designs.

It is inevitably a matter of taste which is preferred, but should be remembered that ’95, ’04, and ’08 films are a severe departure from the original work.

I watched it recently because I’m gearing up for running a cyberpunk RPG and I haven’t seen much in the way of cyberpunk films despite really loving the genre. Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner were the first two I went for. Both disappointed me in different ways. I won’t go into Blade Runner because I think it was an incredible film in enough ways to count and it’s off topic.

Ghost in the Shell kept me watching. Something about it was compelling. The world and a few of the personalities kept convincing me there was more to be said and seen around the corner. I didn’t mind there not being a lot of action–that was fine. But I did mind that nothing happened. It felt like it had a very small amount of plot for the amount of film. It felt like it had a very small amount of plot for the sensation of in-world happening. It’s not like the story revolves around a simple string of murders and can afford to keep things … simple. It revolves around a rather intricate political power struggle, a string of murders, a mind-hacker, and the implications of a cybernetic world. Stuff should have been happening, preferably dialog and exploration rather than action (while there was plenty of dialog, little of it addressed anything but the philosophy of the world).

It also consistently avoided answering or exploring a lot of the questions it presented in dialog. So many of the pieces were in place, but they were left out on the table without proper assembly resulting in something that, were I to watch it a second time, would be a boring slog as I would be unable to convince myself the slow pacing was building to something as I did that first time. The characters also acted as mouthpieces far too often, stepping out of themselves to make long-winded remarks on society while they could have made the same commentary through shorter or at least more in-character dialog sequences.

GitS seemed to think it’s strong point was character and message, when it’s strong point where I was sitting was setting and tone. Going the more subdued route that, for example, Blade Runner took might have served it really well. Keeping the commentary and exposition to a minimum in favor of further world building and tone drama. A moodier GitS with more to say and less said would have been the movie everyone told me I was about to watch. What I actually watched ranks fairly low on my list of science fiction stories and low on my list of films.

Tartakovsky managed to take 3 minute shorts, and with them craft more creativity and simple depth into them than George Lucas ever managed with 3 whole freaking movies.

The biggest disconect for me was General Grievous.

For those that don’t know what I’m talking about, basically just watch this and imagine watching it before having seen the official “movie” version of the character:

Basically the first series finished before Episode 3 came out. We didn’t know much about Grievous other than what he looked like and that he was meant to be a Jedi killing cyborg. So that’s what Tartakovsky ran with.

And it made me look forward to Episode 3 because General Grievous was such an awesomely menacing character. Come the movie and he’s a freaking joke, and in series 2 of Clone Wars Tartakovsky has to retcon in his whole “ailing health” thing.

This is so incredibly awful I just vomited a little. No regard for the visual style of Mass Effect (krogan do not look like that), narration that makes Chris Paolini look like the most original writer ever, continuity fail (blaster beams? REALLY? And since when does Mass Effect have a fucking pump-action shotgun?). I sincerely hope this abomination and insult to the ME universe dies in fucking flames, hopefully before it is even released.

That exchange between the soldiers was absolutely the highlight of ME2 for me. A lot was rubbish, but those little incidental vignettes were great, they really were.

Unlike this new anime thing, which appears to be entirely rubbish with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. What was it one of the devs said back when they were announcing the DA anime/spinoff? They want to use anime because it’s possible to “tell more mature stories”? Yeah, I can really see you using the medium to its (arbitrarily claimed) full potential here guys.

Yeah. The overall storyline of ME2 was dumb, but the small details were pretty great. The Sir Isaac Newton bit had to be my favorite bit of dialogue in the entire game, not that there was all that much to choose from.

It’s like there’s two parts of Bioware: the part that at least tries to be inclusive and original, and the part that keeps commissioning terrible animes and insulting anime figurines and posting the word ‘glomp’ on the forums. But judging from the comments on facebook, most of the fans like the second part.

P.S. “Mass Effect fans, put down your plussedness. You shall need non of it today.” To be nonplussed is to be confused, not bored or uninterested! Just sayin’!

edit: ahahaha i thought it was my work computer being slow but it really is about 1FPS!

Why doesn’t BioWare understand that we’d much rather watch Garrus’s adventures as Archangel on Omega? He’s basically acting like Batman.

The trend of the games and comics makes be believe that BioWare is just bad at casting aliens as anything other than side characters. They were so surprised at how so many loved Garrus and Tali in the first game.

It’d be nice to have it be a different kind of prequel, where ever single character could be commander shepard, given that between them they hit every permutation of his/her background, and no-one is ever referred to by their last name.

Research: please do some. I just decided to poke about to get some more info on this and only the second youtube vid I found after the trailer was an interview from March which featured a flack from Funimation talking about this. For those of you who don’t know anime (like, obviously, Richard Cobbett), Funimation are licensors and distributors usually and it’s unusual for them to be in on production. The talking head says they had major input into character design and they wrote the script – all the creative side such as it is, comes from them.

Funimation are also notorious copyright trolls of the first and foremost order, and love nothing more than distributing Cease and Desist notices to fansubbers. Plus, their spokesperson, presumably the best they could find, can’t pronounce ‘eureka’ or produce any actual names of creative staff.

I think I see the problem…

Production IG, meanwhile, are like any large studio in that they do plenty of non-glamourous contract work on top of their flashy in-house stuff, and I dare say they’ve twigged that doing jobs like this is more valuable to their clients, who get to put “from Production IG, creators of [good stuff vaguely like this shite]” in their trailers but probably pay handsomely for the privilege, than it is detrimental to them. Their reputation need not be tarnished by this.

Sorry, I’m curious, but ignoring your complete ignorance of how much I know about anime or the cupboards full of the stuff I have in my house or long abandoned VHS tapes I threw out, what exactly do you think you’re correcting here?

In the biblical sense? This is true. I suspect doing that with an old Bubblegum Crisis VHS box would be extremely uncomfortable, and you wouldn’t want to be checked into the hospital for serious chafing if you tried it with a Burn Up W DVD. Shameful. Read Or Die might be more acceptable I suppose. At least that a cultural element to it that the nurses might approve of.

Also, Mr Cobbett, I was about to suggest that you should pretend to be one of those deaf mutes. But then I realized that that wouldn’t help you, because a deaf-mute would still be able to read all those comments that accuse you of not knowing anime, or philosophy or whatever else you need to know to appreciate the GitS movie. Pretending to be blind sounds terribly impractical, though.

1. I like anime. Lots. Our culture is pretty saturated with it, what with more than half the shows running on TV coming from Japan and Korea and all. (I will admit, however, that the really stupid ones are incredibly stupid.)

2. This looks horrible. I’ve seen stuff from the 1990’s that looks better than this, and who the hell did they get to write the script? That’s really not Production IG’s usual style, they tend to err towards the understated rather than the hilariously, offensively brouhaha.

Well according to Sir Richard Cobbett in the response he made to my post, it looks like Funimation is mostly responsible for this travesty. While Production I.G. is just paid so they can use their name and claim they had some hand in making it. When really it seems like they did the animation and nothing else.